


and stainless steel

by endquestionmark



Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 12:28:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5708119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endquestionmark/pseuds/endquestionmark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhys doesn’t remember afterwards, exactly, why he does any of what Jack tells him to — sit in the chair, plug himself in, fold his hands in his lap and wait until the inside of his head feels quieter than it has in a while — but then maybe he isn’t the one doing it. Maybe he isn’t exactly thinking; maybe it isn’t exactly him doing the thinking.</p><p>The office door opens, and he looks up.</p><p>“Aw,” Jack says. “Did you miss me?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	and stainless steel

**Author's Note:**

> Look. Come on. We're all in this together.
> 
> In particular, [Cat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit), [Radiophile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiophile), and [Mari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstrung) are in this with me. Thanks. Arguably. Look.

Rhys doesn’t remember afterwards, exactly, why he does any of what Jack tells him to — sit in the chair, plug himself in, fold his hands in his lap and wait until the inside of his head feels quieter than it has in a while — but then maybe he isn’t the one doing it. Maybe he isn’t exactly thinking; maybe it isn’t exactly him doing the thinking. It doesn’t feel like it’ll make any difference, anyway, not after he’s come so far and seen so much. Snow and the desert and the bone-shaking acceleration of escape velocity, and all of it leading him here: it doesn’t really matter what Rhys does, now. He’s where he’s always wanted to be, all of Hyperion at his fingertips like so many pixelated possibilities, and doing what he’s always wanted, Elpis moon-glow loaning the office a certain spectral cast. Blue shadows, blue in Rhys’ wrists where his veins are close to the surface, blue gone from the corners of his vision.

He waits, though, because Jack told him to wait, and — sure — on Helios that usually carries the same meaning as asking someone to stand still for the firing squad, but this is Jack. This is different. Rhys might not trust Jack, might still remember the absolute surety in Jack’s voice when he’d taken control and the way that Rhys had felt the floor drop out from under him, but this goes a little beyond trust. Handsome Jack had never been a man, even when he was alive, and he’s no more of one now that he’s dead. Too much of a myth to last long, and too good of a story to stay down: Rhys knows long odds when he sees them, but there are long odds and then there are million-to-one chances, and he’s got a stubborn spark of belief that he just can’t stamp out. It’ll be a great story, one day. It’ll be the best.

Jack doesn’t appear, though, not on the screens and not in Rhys’ field of vision. Rhys can’t hear Fiona or August anymore — he must have shorted out his communications, or maybe the office is just too well-insulated — but he doesn’t manage to stay still for more than ten minutes before he goes through the desk drawers. “Oh God,” he says, and shuts the first one nearly immediately. “Really? At — wow. Jeez. Okay. Did not need to know, ugh.” The second is crammed with blister packs, most at least half-empty, some of which Rhys recognizes — hackathons: good fun with terrible people, most of whom had been infinitely more tolerable after an eighth of whatever the guys from Chem had managed to cook up — and some of which he’s only heard about, usually followed by numerous disclaimers and deafeningly awkward silence. The third is full of schematics, most of which are long-outdated and stamped as final.

In the fourth drawer, Rhys finds a pair of pistols, wood-handled and well-loved but uncleaned, and knows instinctively that he’s wavering at the edge of a lot of stories that he doesn’t want to know, but won’t be able to help asking for anyway. He closes the fourth drawer.

In the fifth drawer, he finds a picture frame turned face-down. Rhys doesn’t want to turn it over. Rhys knows that he will.

The office door opens, and he looks up guiltily.

“Aw,” Jack says. “Did you miss me?”

“Jack?” Rhys says, and nudges the drawer shut with his knee. “Wait, are you — am I — how?” There’s were and then there’s beyond that, and Rhys watches Jack — mask and flesh and blood, as far as he can tell; his footsteps echo, his smile is no longer transparent, he moves with a certain relaxed assurance that Rhys hadn’t been able to see before — cross the office and lean over the desk, hands set wide so that he can look Rhys right in the eye.

“Huh,” Jack says, and narrows his eyes. “Nope. Still sort of want to punch you in the neck, kid. Sorry. You just have that kind of face.” He laughs. “But hey, bet you’ve heard that before, right?”

“You’re real,” Rhys hears himself say, and immediately catches himself. “I mean, not that you weren’t real, but like. Real real. Right? You’re all—” He pokes Jack in the shoulder, too disbelieving to be cautious, and immediately flinches away when he makes contact. “—solid, and, uh. Please don’t punch me for that,” he adds in a rush, leaning as far back as the chair will let him. “How did you — I mean — what?”

“Oh,” Jack says, exaggerating the syllable, putting on a show. “How’d I get this—” He gestures at himself, shoulders to hips, and Rhys tries not to follow the gesture and fails. “—killer body back? Get it? Killer? Man, I crack myself up.” He waits. Rhys attempts laughter, weakly, and Jack frowns. “No, wait,” he says. “I’m getting ahead of myself here. Nice try, though. Keep it up.” He shrugs. “What can I say? I guess that research budget was good for something after all.”

“Wait,” Rhys says. “Seriously? So Nakayama wasn’t just hiring interns for weapon graft experiments. Huh.”

“Man, I missed out,” Jack says. “Interns. Man. Gotta love them.” He sighs happily. “When they get stuck under your desk, that’s the best part. I had one wedged in there for three weeks, once.” He shrugs. “Eventually I think he just decomposed. Saved on stipends, that’s for sure.”

“So, Nakayama,” Rhys says, because there are some questions that he just doesn’t want to ask.

“Oh, yeah,” Jack says, and leans in again. “You know, the thing about clones is that you can grow them. Easy. An idiot could do it. Or a firepower-obsessed botanist. Same thing. It’s just that they can’t think, you know? Got nothing in the old breadbox. Life support or whatever, no higher thought functions. And let me tell you, Rhysie, I’m all higher thought functions.” Jack taps his temple and winks. “But here’s the other thing. I’ve been riding shotgun in your cavernous skull, so hey! What’s the difference? Plus or minus some very interesting fantasies — and believe me, I couldn’t forget those if I tried. Seriously? With the — come on. Wow.”

“Seriously?” Rhys says. “You looked? What about the one with,” he starts, and looks at Jack’s grin, and abruptly changes his mind. “No no no,” he says. “It’s fine. Right. All of them. Sure. Great. Please go back to making fun of scientists,” he says in desperation.

“Right,” Jack says, grinning. “Fine. Whatever you say, pumpkin. Anyway,” he says, crossing his arms, “What do you know. Having a whole company of suck-ups desperate to lick your boots comes in handy sometimes, like when everyone betrays you and you die.” He waves a hand. “So I swung by R&D for kicks, saw they had a couple of these babies all hooked up and ready to go, and hey presto! It’s even got that new body smell.” He inhales and leans in. “And hey, kiddo? Don’t get any ideas about the extras, huh? Just saying. I’ve been in your head. I know all about that one dream with the body doubles. Can’t say I wouldn’t do the same, but they looked a little, well—” Jack holds up his hands, and Rhys flinches reflexively.

There’s red under Jack’s nails, still arterial, still fresh.

“—Dead, for starters,” Jack says. “I mean, I couldn’t say. I didn’t even notice the blood until it got in my eyes.” He shrugs. “How’s that for a welcome back party?”

“Great,” Rhys says, faintly. “That sounds just great, Jack.”

“That’s what I thought!” Jack says. “I mean, it just gets your blood going, you know. I didn’t think that was a thing, but hey, how many times do you get to strangle yourself, right? Man.” He cracks his neck. Rhys tries not to wince. “Anyway, enough about me. What about you, kid? How’re you doing? Liking the chair? Liking the gig?” He gestures expansively. “Life on the top suits you, huh?”

“Yeah,” Rhys says, because: of course. It’s what he’s always wanted. What other answer could he possibly give? “Yeah, I like it. It feels good.”

“Good to hear!” Jack says. “Good to hear.” He leans back, half-sitting against the desk, and grins, and for no reason that he can name, Rhys thinks: _shit_. It’s like the moment just before a deal goes wrong, or a sale falls through. It’s like looking down from a great height. It’s like realizing that he can’t fly, after all. “So,” Jack says, and it’s like the glint of a knife, or the sound of a gun being cocked, or an entire room full of people going silent, the way that it threads down through Rhys’ spine like wiring, the way that it freezes him in place even though he should be tensed to run. “New plan, new office, new gig, so far so good, but what about you, Rhysie?”

“What about me?” Rhys says, and can’t help the interest in his voice. Even after the past few weeks — even after everything he’s seen and heard and done — it’s hard to forget what it was like, those first few weeks of a hellish internship leading into a hellish contract, listening for every footstep and searching every crowd. It’s hard for Rhys to shake the recruitment posters, and the treasured anecdotes, and the desperate longing for the most infinitesimal scraps of attention. The long hours, and the insulting nicknames, and the increasing likelihood of getting punched in the face: all of it had been worth it, then, to get just an inch closer to Handsome Jack’s shadow. Heroes aren’t easy to come by, not anywhere in a five-system radius, and Handsome Jack had been the real deal. Rhys had said it himself, often enough to look back ruefully. He hadn’t known the half of it.

“Well, look at it this way,” Jack says, and leans over to take Rhys by the shoulder. “Don’t you think you can do a little better than that, kid?”

It comes as a complete surprise, then, when he works his fingers under the pauldron plate of Rhys’ arm and tears it off like so much scrap.

By the time Rhys recovers enough to protest, Jack has his thumbnail worked into the bundled cables connecting Rhys’ arm to his shoulder baseplate, separating them as much as he can. “Really,” Rhys says, a little breathless. Of all the aftereffects of his shoulder replacement, Rhys had taken the longest to adjust to the built-in feedback loop. It isn’t painful, exactly, for Jack to be two fingers deep in the cybernetic equivalent of muscle fiber; the sensation translates as an uncomfortable pressure, and not one for which Rhys has any reference point. He only ever modifies his arm when it’s uncoupled and inert.

It’s like having blood drawn, and watching it rise through the needle. It might not be particularly painful to Rhys, but it’s so much worse when he watches. Jack isn’t being particularly rough, but Rhys gets the sense that it isn’t out of personal interest so much as concern for reasonably delicate wiring. “Jack!” Rhys says, and this time he isn’t breathless so much as faintly nauseated. “Really?”

“Ha!” Jack says, and yanks. Something snaps. That hurts, sudden and bright like an electrical burn or broken cartilage, like something important being damaged beyond repair, and it brings Rhys to his feet, out of the chair and leaning across the desk as if that’ll make things any better. “Come on, pumpkin,” Jack says, and looks up. Rhys wants to pull back, but even beyond Jack’s grip on his elbow, he finds himself unable to even look away, even with Jack’s grin so close and his eyes so bright. “You’re way overdue for an upgrade. I mean, look at this.” He lifts Rhys’ arm and shakes it until Rhys’ wrist rattles with the effort of holding still. “Nobody wants to be damaged goods, right? Nah. You’re a winner, kid. Time to act like it.”

Rhys rotates his wrist until it stops clicking, and then realizes — he can’t feel it, not even where Jack is disconnecting cables, not even the grinding noise at the base of his thumb — even though he can still move it, his arm is so much metal, without the feedback loop. He curls his fingers into a fist, and flexes them open again, and doesn’t feel a thing. “Huh,” he says.

“No shit,” Jack says. “Hey, look at this.” He brushes the end of one cable against another. There’s a crackle, and the faint scent of electrical smoke, and Rhys’ entire arm seizes, juddering in place. “Neat, huh?”

“Fuck!” Rhys says, and Jack laughs and does it again, and maybe it’s how gleeful he looks — like a cat playing with a mouse — or maybe it’s the fact that Rhys still can’t feel any of it — so much meat and metal, so much crossed wiring — or maybe it’s that Jack is still taking him to pieces, absolutely unconcerned with anything that Rhys might have to say about it, rambling about how he’ll make Rhys all _shiny_ and _new_ and _better_ — any one of a hundred things, and Rhys knows he’s fucked up, and Rhys knows he’s fucked, and Rhys doesn’t care. “Jack,” he says again, and he knows it’s breathless and just barely the wrong side of needy to get any of what he wants, and he says it anyway.

“Not now, cupcake,” Jack says, bored and dismissive, and that just makes it worse. Jack’s indifference pushes Rhys from the wrong side of needy into unmistakeable desperation, and he sits on the desk and leans across and lets Jack rewire him and pull the pins from his joints and bend them back into shape until he can’t stand it anymore and pushes Jack away with his left hand, half-hearted and clumsy. “What?” Jack snaps, and if Rhys wanted his attention, he has it now, and has no idea what to do with it.

“Please,” he says, “Jack, don’t, stop.”

“Huh,” Jack says, and if Rhys had his attention before, now he has Jack’s interest as well. “Seriously? This is what gets you hot?”

“It’s not — it’s — look,” Rhys says, aware that he’s blushing, and rubs at the back of his neck. “It’s not the whole — with the — it’s all of it,” he says, trying to pin down what he means by blocking out what he does not. “It’s the way you just — you don’t ask, and you know what you’re doing, and — it’s you,” Rhys says, flustered into honesty, and Jack grins, all delight and appetite.

“Not gonna lie, kid,” Jack says, fingers smeared with graphite and accumulated grime, and Rhys can’t look at the way Jack is handling him — deft and sure — without feeling it like a hook in his lungs, like the best sort of tar-sticky poison. Jack leans up and grins, and doesn’t blink; he just stares, as if he wants to eat Rhys alive, and Rhys couldn’t look away if he wanted. “I was kind of hoping you’d say that,” Jack says, low and sure, like someone throwing down a winning hand, and Rhys folds, just like he’s always known he would if Jack pushed. He folds and leans in, slow and scared and entirely unsure of himself, suddenly, and Jack snorts. “Seriously?” he says. “You’re going to be shy about this now? Come on, baby,” Jack says, so sweet that he may as well be cruel. “Don’t front. You couldn’t be any more obvious if you got down on your knees and begged,” Jack says, and he pulls Rhys down by the back of his neck, and kisses him as if he knows exactly what he wants. Filthy, and messy, and as if he’s already got Rhys gasping for it, too far gone to care about teasing or technique or anything other than the indulgence of it: Jack kisses Rhys breathless as if he couldn’t care less, and Rhys knows how he sounds, needy and eager and so, so easy, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care, as long as it gets him this.

What it gets Rhys is being pulled over the desk until he’s half-lying in Jack’s lap, Jack’s hands in his hair and Jack’s teeth set in his throat and Jack’s laughter against his shoulder as Rhys jerks in surprise. “Look at you,” Jack says. “Not all hair gel and hackathons, huh? I knew that step-on-me face had to be good for something. Man. You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you,” Jack says, and shoves Rhys off his lap, not particularly kindly, and gets up. Rhys listens to the clink of his belt buckle, the sound of his zipper, the way Jack hisses between his teeth, and bites his lip. He knows how he looks, knows how easy he bruises and how quickly his mouth goes bitten-red and swollen and how messy his hair gets, and he looks up at Jack through his eyelashes, propped up on one elbow, and smirks.

“Try me,” he says.

Jack laughs. “Not bad, Rhysie,” he says. “Not bad. You do this a lot, huh? Because let me tell you, kid, it looks good on you. Real good.”

“Yeah,” Rhys says, and if he’s smug enough — pushes Jack far enough — maybe this next part will be worth it. Maybe he’ll be feeling it for days, if he’s good enough. “Come on,” he says, and snags Jack by the belt loop and lets his head tip back over the edge of the desk, eyes half-closed, and Rhys knows that he shouldn’t like this, but he does. He loves the way his world narrows down, and the way his eyes sting, and the way he can never quite catch his breath, and he loves that he’s good at this. Jack isn’t gentle, and he doesn’t give a fuck whether Rhys can breathe, and he doesn’t care if Rhys chokes. He strokes along the line of Rhys’ throat and presses just enough that Rhys can feel it when he swallows, makes him feel used and sore and good, and makes him want to be better for Jack.

Jack pulls back and traces the swell of Rhys’ lower lip with his thumb, hooks a finger into the corner of Rhys’ mouth and pushes back in, slowly, until Rhys is struggling to keep still, desperate for air but even more desperate to be good. His eyes are wet, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t struggle, just waits until Jack lets him breathe again and blinks away the bright spots at the corner of his vision. “Fuck,” Jack says, rough and bitten-off, and that’s even better than the way his throat feels raw, even better than the dizzy rush of that first breath. Rhys doesn’t let go of Jack’s belt with his left hand, doesn’t move his right; he doesn’t do anything but gasp and get one foot up on the desk, give himself a little extra leverage so that he can do things properly and choke himself on Jack’s cock like he means it.

“Oh, fuck,” Jack says, again, and Rhys thinks that it’s all him, making Jack sound like that and lose his rhythm, better by the moment. It’s the way that Jack makes him vicious and uncompromising and greedy, the way that Jack makes him want to take, and makes him feel like he’s good enough to do it. It’s the way that Jack makes it seem like a victory to do this, to lie on Jack’s desk as if Rhys isn’t a person at all and to take it, to let Jack come down his throat and wait until Jack steps away to wipe at his mouth and sit up. It’s the way that Jack sprawls in his chair, all the lazy assurance of a man who knows what he wants and owns it all anyway, and does up his belt, and grins. “Come on,” Jack says. “Give me a show, kiddo. We both know you want it.”

It’s the way that Jack makes Rhys feel as if he’s good enough to beat Jack, if he watches and waits and takes his shot when the time is right. It’s the way that he has to, if he wants any of this to mean anything. It’s the way that his friends are waiting, and the way that they trust him, and the way that, even so, Handsome Jack is watching and smiling, like he knows how this is going to go, and he doesn’t care, and he isn’t wrong.

Rhys has time.

“Say please,” he says, hand already at his belt — his right one, this time, and Rhys can already feel the difference, how much better it is — metal on metal, and he looks at Jack, all wires and glass, and doesn’t blink.

Jack grins. “Sure, pumpkin,” he says. “Please.”

Rhys does.


End file.
